You might imagine that a pulpy, best-selling, all-American thriller written by a guy from New Jersey would translate awkwardly, if not disastrously, into a film by a wunderkind French actor/director, set in Paris instead of New York, and starring luminaries of the French cinema. You’d be half right.

Tell No One, the story of a doctor wrongly accused of the murder of his wife/childhood sweetheart, is all twists and turns. It starts as a sweet love story and an intense, believable drama. Somewhere in the middle of its 125 minutes, it turns ludicrous, with sudden moments of high comedy and one of the most implausible chase scenes ever committed to film. At the end, it becomes serious again, and all the loose ends of the mystery resolve, pleasingly if not quite believably.  

In terms of cold, hard logic, Tell No One is a bit of a train wreck, but Guillaume Canet’s treatment of Coben’s work is such a delicious guilty pleasure that I can’t really fault it. The characters are sympathetic and brilliantly rendered. François Cluzet, as the pediatrician Alexandre Beck, is immediately likeable as an Everyman whose life has been rocked to its foundations. He brings subtlety to even the film's most flamboyant moments. The supporting actors also add psychological depth, and the film has a beautiful look, worth seeing on the big screen.  Even at its most unbelievable moments, it is never boring.    

Canet clearly could have made an entirely vérité thriller that no one would feel guilty about loving, but if he had, some of the pure joy of this movie would be lost. There’s something infinitely satisfying about both the predictable and the ridiculous elements here. It is refreshing to care about Alexandre as much as I did, and to have his story neatly resolved (with sensational flourishes.)